GL Business Unit ChartField

Design

General Ledger (GL) Business Unit is used to define an agency or an agency subset that is independent with regard to one or more accounting or operational functions. Several system functions correspond to individual GL Business Units, including entering, approving, and maintaining transactions, requesting reports, defining agency-specific ChartFields, enforcing security and data segregation, and requesting system close processing maintained at the DFS level. In addition to the GL Business Unit, there are module-specific Business Units that assist with transaction processing and GL accounting integration. One module-specific Business Unit for each agency will be associated with one GL Business Unit, with the exception of the GL Business Units associated to Treasury and Enterprise functions.

A GL Business Unit is self-balancing, meaning that debit amounts must equal credit amounts in order to maintain a balanced set of accounts for that GL Business Unit. Upon entering a transaction line in a source module, the balancing lines are automatically created by the system on an accounting entry to ensure that debit amounts equal credit amounts.

GL Business Unit values are five (5) characters in length. Florida PALM will establish one GL Business Unit per agency. The table shows a mapping of the legacy OLO to the new GL Business Unit values. Please note: agency names have been modified to meet the 30-character limit in Florida PALM.

The following design considerations are applied when defining a GL Business Unit in Florida PALM: 

• GL Business Unit values are standardized statewide
• GL Business Unit values must be uniquely numbered
• User access to enter transactions under a respective GL Business Unit will be managed via permission list security
• GL Business Unit is required on all transactions
• A GL Business Unit is available for each agency that receives appropriations in LAS/PBS
• Additional GL Business Units, approved by DFS, are established to support additional processing and reporting segregation at the Enterprise level (i.e., Treasury operations (BU: 43001), Treasury/Agency investment activity (BU: 43002), and Accounting & Auditing operations (43900))

Assumptions

The following assumptions are considered when defining a GL Business Unit:

• The legislative process that authorizes creation of agencies through LAS/PBS remains the same to establish GL Business Units in Florida PALM
• DFS can define GL Business Units to support enterprise accounting and reporting needs

Maintenance

GL Business Unit values in Florida PALM are centrally maintained by DFS. Agencies are not able to add or modify GL Business Unit values. For GL Business Units that represent agencies that receive appropriations through LAS/PBS, modifications to existing values will be limited to legislative actions that establish, remove, combine, or rename agencies.

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